The continued goal of Prostate SPORE Tissue/Informatics Core is to collect biological material withassociated clinical information to facilitate translational research. The Tissue Core places patientconfidentiality and clinical care as a top priority. As a coordinated effort between pathology, urology, medicaloncology, and SPORE researchers, the Core has a developed a unified bioinformatics infrastucture thatprovides researchers a wide range of annotated samples. To date, detailed information exists on over 2000radical prostatectomy patients operated on at the University of Michigan between 1994-present. The specificgoals of the Tissue Core include: (1) Protection of patient welfare. The highest priority is given to assure thatno research protocol compromises pathology diagnosis or tumor staging. Patient confidentiality ismaintained through use of an IRB-approved database protocol (2) Acquisition and processing of prostatetissues for research. The Core assures that the widest range of prostate tissues and derived biomolecules(i.e., protein, DMA and RNA) are available from several established and new sources. These include benignDrostate tissue from patients without any known prostatic disease (cystoprostatectomy specimens andtransplant donor prostates), clinically localized prostate cancer (U of M), and metastatic hormone refractoryprostate cancer (Rapid Autopsy Program). (3) Maintenance of clinical and pathology data with links tomolecular studies. The Tissue/Informatics Core will continue to expand the detailed clinical and pathologydatabase conforming to the National Cancer Institute's Common Data Elements (CDE) guidelines, permittingqueries between molecular findings and clinically relevant outcomes. The Core is also an adopter in thecaBIG/IPBS initiative. (4) High quality pathologic review of prostate tissues. Expert pathologists assureuniform review of prostate tissue samples. (5) Pathology consultation for the purpose of designingtranslational research projects. This service focuses on determining the types of tissues and amountrequired for the successful completion of the projects. (6) Quality assessment of prostate tissues and clinicadata. The Tissue Core staff regularly evaluates frozen and formalin fixed tissues for adequacy. (7)Development of technology appropriate for pathology based translational research. In this renewal, FISHbased strategies are presented to evaluate genomic biomarkers using tissue microarrays. Technologiessuch as quantitative real time PCR and laser capture microdissection protocols will be refined. In summary,the Tissue Core will provide SPORE investigators with a wealth of carefully annotated samples fortranslational research, while maintaining the highest level of clinical care.
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